


A Penny for your Icky Emotions

by LostinScribbles



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Just doing some shopping, Minor cursing & innuendo, One Shot, Post-FWSA, Slice of Life, small amount of Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:49:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28819533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostinScribbles/pseuds/LostinScribbles
Summary: Thomas was really in need to do some shopping, so what better time than a sunny afternoon to run a few errands?Well... with a certain intrusive trash man breathing down your neck, it's never that easy.
Kudos: 23





	A Penny for your Icky Emotions

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there everyone! This is my attempt at a crackfic, I think? A One-Shot featuring Remus and Logan joining Thomas on a trip to the city, what could go wrong?   
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy and would appreciate to read what you think :)

It’s one of those days, and how Thomas wished for his thoughts to just leave him in peace without constantly yelling things like:

“Why don’t you just get naked right now?! You’re way too hot to be walking around town in THOSE clothes!”

Before Thomas has even walked through one lane of shops, Remus has already been complaining on the entire way towards the city centre. For a Thursday mid-spring it’s actually been quite sunny, so Logan saw it as the perfect opportunity to persuade his host to finally run some errands he’s been meaning to get for days.   
Thomas wasn’t sure why Remus wanted to tag along in the first place. Logan isn’t exactly one to pay Remus the attention he wants, at least that’s what Thomas was thinking. Plus, running some errands can’t be that exciting for Remus anyway, right?

“Don’t talk nonsense, Remus. Thomas’s bodily temperature is precisely what it needs to be. He needs to be properly dressed as to not catch a cold later.”

As Thomas takes strolling steps through the shopping street that’s completely littered with people, he can’t even get his anxiety under control amidst the crowd with those two constantly bickering at each other.  
“Logan,” Thomas finally sighs, still meandering his way through the flood of fellow shoppers. “Can you just go over the shopping list again?”  
“Of course,” Logan readily replies, readjusting his glasses. “First things first, you need to buy yourself a new pair of jeans along with some plain T-shirts-”  
“…floral T-shirts?” Thomas buts in, glancing over at Logan expectantly.  
“PLAIN T-shirts. Afterwards, we need to get the groceries for dinner tonight as Gavin is coming over-”  
“Meh, that kid loves some good ol’ junk food way more anyway!” Remus shouts in Thomas other ear, leaving him to back away slightly to the right, almost bumping into two older ladies passing him by.  
“No need to get all fancy and healthy,” Remus continues, making a gagging sound.   
After clearing his throat in annoyance, Logan continues his enumeration of the shopping list written out on a paper in his hand.   
“Finally, don’t forget to pick up a new toothbrush, toothpaste, and cleaning supplies. You need to properly clean your bathroom before you can have any guests over at all.”  
“Come on, Logan!” Thomas exclaims, but lowering his voice instantly as soon as he notices weird glances from some shoppers around him.  
“Gavin wouldn’t really mind anyway, and-”

“-it isn’t THAT filthy.  
“-it isn’t THAT filthy you know!”

It never fails to disturb Thomas whenever his and Remus’s thoughts end up blending together like this. Remus only gets more pleasure out of it, at the expense of everyone else. Thomas can already feel the Duke grinning at him from his left.  
“OH! Remember that one time the cockroaches were crawling out of the shower drain?! That was hysterical!” Remus laughs loudly.  
Logan just sighs and shakes his head at Thomas. Though Thomas now has the image imprinted in his mind so vividly, he isn’t even sure if this actually happened once or not.

***

Luckily he doesn’t have to bear with it for long, because he managed to reach the clothing store after walking down a couple of streets. It’s a relatively small and quaint shop, and there aren’t too many other customers around.   
Leisurely Thomas scans along the clothing racks and shelves, looking for some simple jeans preferably without rips in them.  
“Nah you should DEFINITELY get some ripped jeans!”  
Remus once again glances over Thomas’s shoulder scanning the jeans, giving him a shove in his back to urge him to pick up a pair.  
“Can you chill?!” Thomas hisses back at Remus, glancing in Logan’s direction who is methodically looking at the collection of pants as well.  
“Ripped jeans are not an option, Thomas can’t present himself in torn clothes,” Logan quite scornfully responds, and crosses his arms to face the two of them.   
“Present himself to… whom?” Remus cackles a little, clearly mocking Logan in a faux-sophisticated way of talking. Though ashamed to admit it, Thomas has to force himself to not smirk at Remus’s remark.   
Be it unconsciously or not, he faintly finds himself reaching for the ripped jeans and holding them in front of him. He never really imagined it would fit him personally, but maybe…

“Ooooh, don’t tell me-”  
Leave him out of your sight for two seconds, and Remus hits back three times as hard. A forceful slam on Thomas’s shoulders by a pair of hands immediately snap him out of his train of thought.  
“Your ripped hunk of a crush is on your mind!”  
Thomas feels his face burning up in an instant. Sure, he’s been thinking about Nico a lot since he first ran into him at the mall. And sure, he still think he’s really cute. But Nico wouldn’t be one to like ripped jeans, would he?

“Well nerdy Wolverine, what do ya say? Would our naive Thomas impress him with a pair of those?” Remus widely grins at Logan, and Thomas half-expectantly stares in his direction too. Not that he would expect Logan to have anything to say about Thomas’s fashion sense much.   
The manner in which Logan dismissively scoffs and walks past him however, catches him slightly off guard.  
Logan hasn’t really commented anything on Nico yet, since Thomas came back from the mall that day. Come to think of it, today is the first day he’s proactively shown himself to Thomas aside from the usual chores and reminders. As he watches Logan browse through the plain shirts the shop has hanging from their racks, something about his demeanor rubs Thomas the wrong way.  
…No, not like THAT!  
Without even glancing behind him, he hears Remus snorting. Shaking his head, Thomas ultimately puts the ripped jeans back and grabs a pair of regular blue jeans instead. 

“C’mon! You haven’t said anything about our new flowery hunk yet!”  
To Thomas’s surprise, Remus has approached Logan in the meantime. While choosing what shirts to get, and sneakily looking for a floral-print one as well, Thomas happens to catch some of Remus and Logan’s conversation.  
“Correct, and I don’t need to,” Logan responds curtly. Remus frowns and puts his hands on his hips.  
“Sure you do! I’m not gonna let you off the hook until I’ve heard what you think of-”  
“I don’t CARE!”  
As Logan’s yell keeps ringing in Thomas’s mind, he finds himself almost as startled as Remus at Logan’s sudden outburst.  
“I mean… That is not my department, so accordingly it’s not my place to judge. All the others would say the same.”

A weird tension is hanging in the air, Remus slightly pouting though glancing over at Logan with a quizzical look on his face. Logan grunts and turns his head away from them, adjusting his tie in an attempt to feign he’s still composed. Thomas quickly grabs the T-shirts he needs to shake the tension off.   
“Well, I’ll just go and ring these up!” he thinks aloud, heading towards the counter and attempting to exchange he usual back-and-forth with the young friendly cashier. Though in the back of his mind, Thomas picks up Remus’s last remark which appears both snarky and a bit solemn.  
“Right, ‘cause who wants to involve himself with stupid things like love anyway? Surely not these two dorks!”   
As Thomas turns around, now shopping bag with new clothes in hand, he watches Remus bump Logan on his shoulder with his fist. He follows them out the store, the air still feeling awkward between them as the two remain eerily silent until Thomas reaches the supermarket.

***

And of course, it’s as crowded as can be.   
Thomas takes a deep breath, focusing on the shopping list at hand and maneuvering his way around the horde of customers. He’s planning to make a tortilla recipe, for which the ingredients should be easy enough to find. Reaching the fruits & vegetables stalls, grabbing some tomatoes, avocados, lettuce-  
“Boy! Look at those MELONS!”   
Playfully tossing a watermelon in his hand, Remus shoots a devious grin to his host. Shouldn’t he already know that’s not gonna work on him? Luckily it takes one scornful look from Logan to make Remus put the melon back, disappointed as he may seem.   
Quickening his pace, Thomas moves forward towards the herbs and spices section. Just waiting for Remus to make another inappropriate comment, he hears two pairs of footsteps rapidly approaching through the isle.

“Betcha can’t catch up to me!!”  
“Wait up!”  
Two young boys are racing each other through the aisle barely paying attention to their surroundings. Other customers are sighing and groaning, while making way for the hyperactive boys. The first boy rushes past Thomas in a hurry, evidently the faster and more reckless one of the two. Desperately trying to catch up, the second boy follows suit. Despite thinking it might be a bit inappropriate for children to run around free in a jam-packed supermarket, Thomas would feel unjustified addressing it with those kids. He’s not their parent, after all.

While Thomas thought to only make way for the boys to pass, before he realizes it, Remus makes him stick out his foot. The second boy trips over it, smacking into the floor though luckily able to turn sideways to break his fall. But that doesn’t keep him from crying out, tears streaming down his face.  
For a few seconds, Thomas is too taken aback to even react. Soon after though, his heart starts beating in his neck as an immense sense of guilt and embarrassment washes over him. Why did he do that?! Or better yet, why did Remus? What makes it worse, the kid is even younger than Gavin.

A paternal instinct immediately makes Thomas reach down, grabbing the boy by his arm carefully in an attempt to help him get up.  
“Oh dear, I am so sorry! Are you okay?”  
From the corner of his eye, he sees the other kid stopping in his tracks and walking back too. Thomas’s heart skips a beat as he sees a woman, most likely the mother, turn around the opposite corner and rush to the boys’ side.  
“Ma’am, I am terribly sorry! I wasn’t paying attention and-”  
“No please, I apologize for the ruckus. Come here, are you hurt?”  
Swiftly addressing Thomas and then redirecting her concern to the kid on the floor, Thomas shoots an angry gaze in Remus’s direction.  
“Remus, that was uncalled for,” Logan tells him sternly, trying to catch his gaze as well. However, Remus seems lost in thought just staring at the boy crying in his mother’s arms.   
The woman looks at the other slightly older-looking boy, idling awkwardly in front of them having an extremely guilty expression on his blushing face.  
“I told you to stop running through the store! You’re bothering the other people and see what happened to your little brother!”  
Helping the little brother dotingly get back on his feet, she forcefully grabs the arm of the older brother and tugs him along with her down the aisle. She looks over at Thomas again apologetically, bowing her head slightly, before walking along. 

“Remus! You can’t just make me do things like that!”

As Thomas looks at him, he almost regrets saying anything at all.  
Remus is furiously biting his lip, tightening his hands into fists and oozing a menacingly dangerous aura. But as soon as he notices Thomas staring, he quickly recuperates and crosses his arms at him.  
“Oh don’t you worry!” Remus taunts back at him, putting on a mocking voice that gets increasingly lower and spiteful.  
“The little one is probably getting doted on, pampered. It was all that old brat’s fault for running around anyway, right?! So don’t get so f*cking sensitive.”   
Brushing against Thomas’s shoulder, Remus strolls past while swinging his Morningstar around. Luckily that thing is just a figment as well, otherwise the whole supermarket would be destroyed already. At least… can he really believe that?  
Remus hardly ever gets Thomas to the point of actually acting on those random intrusive thoughts entering his mind. So the fact that he was able to do it now…

“Don’t panic, Thomas. Impulses like that can happen to anyone. Focus on the shopping list.”  
Logan puts the list back in Thomas’s hand, talking slowly and articulating clearly in order to keep his attention. If Logan only knew what a lifesaver he could be sometimes.  
“Thanks, Logan. I’ll do that. If you can make sure…”  
Logan nods assuredly, glancing over at Remus’s direction.   
He’s right, just get the rest of the groceries together. Don’t forget the cleaning supplies, too.

***

“Remus, get down from there.”  
As Logan approaches the Duke, he’s standing on top of the shelves contain countless brands of pasta sauce and mashed tomatoes. Having his back turned to Logan, Remus is juggling some various bottles in his hands.  
“We could TOTALLY fake someone’s death using this as blood. Wouldn’t that be fun?”  
“Remus,” Logan tells him again, putting on a sterner voice and crossing his arms. Dear, now he starts sounding like Patton.  
“Chill out, teach. Ya know how I’m ‘Imagination’ and all that? And they say you’re the smart one…”  
“Well, then how do you explain what just transpired?” Logan responds, glancing back behind him towards Thomas who looks a bit distraught still while browsing the shelves for Mexican spices.  
“You realize how upset Thomas can get if you start interfering like that.”  
“Duh, that’s why I do it,” Remus mockingly responds. He jumps off the shelves with a loud thump, hitting the ground. He turns around in a split second, tilting his head at Logan in an unnatural position and giving him one of his ‘scary’ wide-eyed grins.

“I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT.”

Unfazed, Logan stares back at Remus blankly. There has to be a reason he is acting out so much. Ever since encountering those two children.  
“Has something gotten on your nerves?”   
Without a second thought, Logan speaks out his observations aloud awaiting Remus’s response. The grin falls from his face, replaced by one of apparent confusion.  
“…Huh? Why would you care?” Remus answers. Strikingly enough, Logan really seems to have caught him off guard. Being on the giving end of it, does make some weird sensations stir inside Logan. If only anyone would ask him the same…  
Quickly shaking those unusual thoughts from his mind, Logan continues his deductions.  
“Ever since we ran into those two boys, or rather they ran into us, you’ve seemed-”  
“WHO CARES if I make one little infant trip, falling flat on his face? The brat had it coming!”  
Remus shoots back into furious expressions, faking a distorted smile to make it appear he can keep his emotions under control.  
“But see, in the end it doesn’t matter. Because HE always gets to be the one who’s-”

Remus stops himself from saying anything else, scoffing and looking at Logan in disbelief.  
“Why should I be telling you all of this? It’s not like you have a perfect handle on those icky emotions of yours either.”  
“I don’t have such-”  
“Don’t even try that sh*t with me! Jan and I have been gossiping about you, ya know… And keeping quiet isn’t gonna help you acknowledge them.”  
It’s very much unlike Logan to get agitated over something as petty as emotions, but it’s like he can’t help himself.   
“What good would it do to lash out in meaningless banter? If I should look at you as an example, I’d say such actions won’t do anyone any good.”  
“Hmph, I’d say it’s SO much more liberating than keepin’ ‘em all bottled up! You must be ready to POP, aren’t you?”  
Giving Logan a sickeningly flirtatious look for some reason, Logan unconsciously feels his hands clasping together.   
“I’m not…” is all Logan manages to utter, before Remus continues to provoke him.  
“If you only vented a bit more like ME, maybe none of those icky things you’re feeling right now would ever-”

“Oh please. Don’t start convincing me you are actually venting your true feelings by the way you’re acting.”  
Logan is surprised by his own delivery, adding considerably more sarcasm and spite in his tone of voice than he usually would. But at least he can figuratively turn the tables on him now.  
“You are clearly avoiding confrontation by lashing out vulgarities, in case you haven’t noticed.”  
“You going psycho-analysis on me now?” Remus answers crossing his arms at him, while trying to keep a smirky confident grin on his face.

“This is all about Roman, isn’t it?”  
That seems to have hit the mark, as Remus’s smile disappears from his face and his expression darkens.   
“Instead of confronting him with whatever it is you’re eager to tell him, you’ve been figuratively beating around the bush.”  
“Like you’re one to talk,” Remus snaps back at him, inching closer and closer until their faces are almost touching.  
“How long are you gonna keep being in denial? Are ya scared, scared they won’t find you so reliable anymore?” he taunts Logan, tilting his head at him and intensely staring without breaking eye contact for a second. Even though he hates to admit it, Logan is actually starting to feel uncomfortable being in so close proximity of Remus.  
And on top of that, Logan can’t even conjure up a response. Why does it feel like he just pinpointed exactly what’s been bothering him all these days? Why Remus, of all people?

“Concerned to be shoved aside, perhaps. That they’ll do better if you’re gone. Fade into oblivion.”  
Though Logan tries to continue his previous deductions, he isn’t even sure who he’s talking to at this point. But for some reason, he felt ‘compelled’ to voice his thoughts anyway regardless of who he’s directing them to. Either Remus or… himself.   
Surprisingly, it seems to have gotten through to Remus. He backs away from Logan, putting his hands in his pockets and cheekily glancing sideways.  
After a few seconds of silence, Remus is the one to speak up again.  
“Seems we have more in common than we thought, nerd.”  
Sticking his tongue out playfully, the darkened expression seemed to have faded from his face and his erratic posture calmed down.  
“Apparently so.”  
“Doesn’t that gross you out??”  
“Well, I won’t say it isn’t annoying… But no, not necessarily.”  
Again, Remus appears caught off guard. Logan isn’t one to ‘read the air’, as they say, but even he can sense some kind of awkwardness hanging between the two of them.

“Guys, I’m all done!”

Suddenly from behind the corner of the isle, Thomas comes running back with a cart filled with groceries and cleaning products.  
“Think I got everything, right Logan? Let’s go ring it up.”  
Logan nods, even catches himself smiling at Thomas as he and Remus follow his host towards the cash registers.   
“Time to lock away those icky feelings for another day!” Remus grins widely, peering at Logan from the corner of his eye.  
Logan can’t help but scoff a little in response. That might be the case, but one thing he can’t deny is how much lighter he feels now. Like a figurative weight being lifted, simply by expressing something he never really though he would. And to Remus, for some reason.   
Surely his mood will worsen as he gets home, but for the time being…

***

“That’ll be 42 dollars and 69 cents please, sir.”  
Without even glancing behind him, Thomas can already tell from the loud smirking behind him that Remus is holding in his laughter as he proceeds to take out his card.  
Actively looking away from him, he nods friendly to the cashier after collecting the groceries in some reusable (floral-print) bags from home, rather than one of those commercially printed plastic ones. He would’ve just bought one too, if Logan didn’t remind him last minute to reuse the bags he already had. Environment friendly and all that.

“C’mon, you gotta admit that was pretty funny! The numbers were just perfect!” Remus snickers, giving Thomas a playful but strong pat on the back.  
“You almost made me burst out in front of a queue of customers, for goodness sake…”   
Thomas responds, luckily able to brush off Remus’s suggestions rather quickly again. Logan is right, random thoughts is all they are. Can happen to anyone, can’t they?  
“Though it might be an unfortunate coincidence, numbers is all they are at the end of the day.”  
Wait.  
Who said that?  
Thomas stops dead in his tracks outside the store, looking at the Sides behind him. Remus is similarly staring at Logan. Just as dumbfounded as Thomas finds himself to be.  
Did Logan really just say that?

Logan’s face turns bright red instantly.  
“Uh, no. I-I did not mean it like that-”  
“I COULDN’T BE MORE PROUD!” Remus shouts in Logan’s face, wrapping his arms around him which makes Logan stiffen up completely.  
“I just KNEW you would get my meticulous sense of humor eventually! Even dorky teachers still have so much to learn, don’t they?”  
“You’re talking nonsense, I have no idea what you mean. I would never… care for such simple-minded humor…”  
But Logan’s words trail off in doubt, leaving Remus beaming with enjoyment.

And Thomas can’t help but laugh.


End file.
